


The Chains that Break

by Azellma



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Chem Use (Fallout), F/M, Open Relationships, PTSD, Polyamory, Sequel, Trauma, it's gonna be long
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:42:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29898534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azellma/pseuds/Azellma
Summary: Things were going so well. A good employer, a woman who loved him. Actual friends. A place he might, one day, call home. He should have expected *something* to go wrong.SEQUEL to The Chains that Bind. (If you haven't read the original, I suggest you go back and do so, or very little of this is going to make sense.)
Relationships: Charon/Female Sole Survivor, John Hancock/Female Sole Survivor
Comments: 16
Kudos: 13





	The Chains that Break

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so, this took a lot longer than I was hoping. I rewrote the first chapter about eight times. You know how it is when you have chapter 56 looking great but you don't even want to THINK about the opening arc.... 
> 
> Anyway, it's finally here. Chapters will come as they come, hopefully not too long a wait between them. 
> 
> Love you guys, it's good to be back :)

The storm was on them moments before they reached the house. First the mist, thick and green, then the first drops of rain, warm despite the cold winter air. The mistress’s pip-boy started to tick its warning. _Radiation. Danger._

Charon grit his teeth. They had lingered too long on that beach. They had stayed because she wanted to stay, and he hadn’t argued because he had spent too much time over the last few weeks criticising her for one thing or another. And, he had to admit to himself, the beach had been beautiful. The bombs had not touched it the way they had the rest of the Commonwealth. The sand, the ocean, the horizon… If it hadn’t been for the distant green flash in the storm out to sea, he might have been looking back through time. To before the bombs, before humans, even. Before life itself. 

And now the reality of the wasteland had caught up with them. Foolish.

He reached up to pull the boards away from the door, and the first flash of lightning sent a thrill along his nerves. 

He shot a look at Sloan to see her wince.

“Almost there,” he said, grunting as he pulled a board down and tossed it aside. “Just a moment longer, smoothskin.”

“I know.”

He wanted to get her inside as soon as possible. The radiation from the storm was one thing, but he did not want her to get wet. Even the warm rain of a radstorm could be dangerous as it cooled, and getting wet in a winter this cold, without proper shelter… it was dangerous. The weather hadn’t been so bad when they’d left Goodneighbor, but with each passing day the temperature had dropped, until it had become one of the coldest winters Charon could remember. There hadn’t been snow — not yet — but the morning frosts had started by their second week on the road, with chill sleeting rains and a biting wind that blew down from the north. It was frightening. And she wasn’t taking it as seriously as he wanted her to.

At least she’d taken the fucking coat with her. Brown leather, thick, warm. He’d found it in her bedroom at Sanctuary Hills and badgered her into wearing it, and she had complained every day since that it was too heavy. As if that mattered, when she could freeze to death. Ghouls noticed cold more to the touch, but the radiation in their blood kept their temperature high, and more than once he had missed how cold she had become until he caught her hands shaking or her teeth chattering. It had bothered him deeply to realise Hancock was right: she felt the cold. She just didn’t mention it. The one time he’d really snapped at her about it she had smiled, and reminded him that she had been trained to survive, to _fight,_ in an Alaskan winter. _I know how to tramp miles through the snow and build a windbreak and what to do if I get frostbite,_ she’d said. _I know how to sleep on the ground above the permafrost and still not freeze to death, Charon. I’m fine._ What could he say to that? 

Their travels had taken them past Oberland Station, up north to Abernathy Farm, Sanctuary, and east toward the coast. Now they were headed south, back towards home. He knew she wanted to get to Goodneighbor before the new year, to spend some time with Hancock, and he had no objections. He had enjoyed their time on the road, but a part of him was looking forward to the safety of Goodneighbor’s walls, and the almost-freedom that went with it. 

After his captivity in the bunker and his weeks of recuperation, it had been deeply gratifying to test his strength. Walking each day from dawn until dusk, hunting, fighting, killing… Protecting her again, keeping her safe… it felt like something had slotted back into place. He felt almost himself again. 

If only she would take the fucking weather seriously.

Charon yanked another board from the door, his jaw clenched. Another flash of lightning split the sky, flooding him with vibrant energy. Another day, without her here, he might have enjoyed it, but she was in pain every time the lightning flashed. The pressure of the contract and each new dumping of energy he didn’t need combined to make him feel high-strung, almost panicky, and he fought to keep his mind focused as he reached for another board. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sloan slip another rad-X between her lips.

Charon grit his teeth, swearing under his breath. 

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he growled, and wrenched the last board away from the door. She darted inside, and Charon followed, pulling the door shut behind him.

“Are you okay?” she asked him, wincing as another bolt of lightning cracked through the sky.

“Fine. Get down into the basement.”

No small number of families had turned basements into bunkers, back before the Great War. Whoever had lived here had had the same idea, and the door was thick, lined with lead to keep out radiation. He ushered Sloan down the stairs, slammed the heavy door behind them, shot the locks, and waited. Only the faintest tingle of radiation filtered through, and he sighed in relief.

“Okay?” he asked her.

She was a little damp, but the rain had mostly run off her thick leather jacket, and when she pulled the battered ushanka hat from her head her hair looked dry enough. It was made from fur-lined grey leather, and might have been the only thing in the world that didn’t suit her, but at least it helped to keep her warm. 

“I’m fine,” she said, running her hand through her hair and catching her fingers on a tangle. She made a face as she tried to untangle it, stepping back to let him pass her on the stairs. 

The basement was cold, but it was dry. It was probably warmer than the house above them, nestled underground, thick concrete walls keeping out the frost. He had intended to check their hiding place for dangers, but there wasn’t much to check. No holes for a feral to hide in, no secret passages. There were some empty shelves, a couple of broken pieces of furniture likely stored before the war, that the owner had never got around to fixing. Otherwise, it was bare. Long picked-over by scavengers. 

“Charon… Did I do something wrong?”

“What?” He glanced at her long enough to see the concern on her face, and looked away.

“You were angry with me. About the storm?”

He almost laughed at himself. Christ. He didn’t want to bring this up, have her make some suggestion he couldn’t take her up on. It was difficult enough as it was to keep a distance between them. 

“Not the storm,” he sad. “Or… not you. The storm did not help, but…”

“Too much energy?”

He nodded. “The storm, the contract. It was — you —” He broke off. His torn lips curled back from his teeth in something caught between a grin and a grimace. “The rad-X. You always take one of those before we…”

“ _Oh._ ”

“…and it has been a long time.” A muscle twitched in his cheek, and he kept his gaze on the basement shelves. 

“Three weeks, isn’t it?” she said. He heard the lightness in her voice, and hated himself a little. “You’ve survived a lot longer than that before.”

“Don’t tease me, smoothskin. That isn’t what I meant.” 

“You used to like it when I teased you. A little, anyway. Sometimes.” She leant forward on the ballustrade, intruding on his field of vision. “What _did_ you mean?”

He bit the inside of his cheek.

“It made me think of things. Of — of times we were safe. Frustrations and regrets. Things I want and cannot have.” He watched her out of the corner of his eye. “Nothing you need to worry about, smoothskin.”

“Charon —”

“Don’t. This is my burden.”

“Charon, what the hell are you talking about?” He turned to her, found she was smiling with a kind of puzzled amusement. “It doesn’t need to be a burden. It’s a choice, and maybe it’s the right one. It’s a burden only if you’ve decided this is some punishment for a failure, and you and I both know that that’s bullshit.” She tilted her head to one side. “Why does this bother you so much?” 

“It doesn’t bother you?” 

Her face softened, and there was something in her expression he couldn’t read. 

“Not the way it bothers you, I think.” She made her way down the stairs towards him, each foot hovering a moment above the lower step before it descended. “If you didn’t want to wait until we were someplace safe, we wouldn’t be waiting. But it’s not like it’s eating me up inside.” She shrugged. “You’re right. Sex on the road is always a risk. And you’re better at assessing risk than I am. If you say no fucking, then… no fucking.” 

Charon grimaced. It wasn’t _just_ the fucking, and that was the problem. Sex he could go without — had gone without, sometimes for years. It was the connection he missed. 

This, aside from her stubbornness about the cold, was the one thing had lessened his enjoyment of the past few weeks. After that first night camped out in the skyscraper, he had barely touched her. Even in her house at Sanctuary they had limited themselves to a few kisses. None of the campsites they had set up had been anything close to what he would consider _safe enough_ , and the settlements… He loved his mistress, but the longer they spent around settlements, the harder it was to deal with her. Not that she was handsy, or forward. She had always let him take the lead on familiarities and casual touching, whether they were in settlements or out in the wasteland, and he loved her for it. But she was an affectionate person, and sometimes she forgot herself. On the road that was fine, but he was more aware than she was of humans’ stares. 

He wanted her, wanted to close that distance, and yet that distance was safety. Safety for him, for her. A hundred voices in his head argued back and forth, weighing the danger, dismissing it one moment and amplifying it the next. Most of the time he didn’t think of it, and then she takes a fucking rad-X to protect herself from the storm and all he can think of is the times he held her naked in the dark and how much he fucking _wants that_ and how much they would risk if he decided to be the fucking selfish bastard he was.

And none of this was her fault. He was the one who stepped away from her, the one creating distance between them. And how was he better at assessing risk, when he’d managed to get himself fucking kidnapped, when he’d left her alone, sick and in pain? How could he be better at assessing risk when he was neurotically avoiding getting within three feet of her to ensure he didn’t make the same fucking mistake he’d made two months ago? It must be driving her crazy, and she had never shown it. 

He bit the inside of his cheek.

“I know this is my fault,” he said, “but —”

“No, it — it’s not your _fault,_ Charon. I’m not _blaming_ you.” Her brows pinched together, her lips twisting into a frown of concern. “None of this is about _fault_.” 

“Sloan. You’re allowed to be angry at me.”

“I’m not angry.” 

“Why the fuck not? _I_ am angry at me. Fuck…” His torn lips pulled away from his teeth. “Why _wouldn’t_ you be angry with me? When you take a fucking chem and all I can think about is all the other times you took it, that I could be holding you right now and I’m not, and that I’m a selfish fucking asshole because you’re taking it to protect yourself from _fucking radiation poisoning,_ and _still_ I let this — this —” He broke off, swearing. “I know it is a weakness, but I — I _can’t_ just — After what they could have done to you? After —” He exhaled sharply, reaching up to dig his fingers into his hair. “That fucking place lives in my head. Those _monsters_ live in my head, they — you know they tailed us for a week? They _watched_ us. They —”

“ _Charon._ ” 

He squeezed his eyes shut, biting down harder on the inside of his cheek, until he tasted blood. 

He had let himself become overwhelmed. Again.

It was happening less and less, but it bothered him that he could still be swept up by those thoughts without knowing it. Over a month had passed since his rescue from the bunker. His scars were fading, but everything else — the images that arose from nowhere, the niggling anxieties that wore at him until he snapped at her — they would _not_ fade. At least, not quickly enough. They weren’t even _related_ to it, sometimes — they were random thoughts, random irritations, fears, concerns, voices in his head that argued back and forth. It wasn’t until they boiled over that he even noticed what was happening. Each step he took away from that place brought him back to where he’d started. Each lengthening stretch of hours without thinking about it ended with a sharper, more painful reminder. Even the strategies he had developed bothered him, repeating the same exercise _every fucking day_ until it had become one of boredom and frustration. Why did he still need to do this? 

He wanted to fight, and he couldn’t. The anger was part of it, feeding back into it in a toxic cycle. Anger at himself. Anger at the world. On bad days, anger at her.

Charon forced his frustration aside, and focused on himself. He was a physical person, in many ways, and while he had always had trouble with the watching-the-thoughts part of Sloan’s lantern exercise, the watching-the-body part made sense to him. It rooted him to the here-and-now in a way he found familiar. He took a deep breath, and let his awareness sink into his skin. The tension in his shoulders, his jaw. Muscle by muscle, he focused on the tension, consciously relaxing them each in turn. He let his hands drop, noticed the twitch in his fingers, the way they wanted to curl into fists. He let them, just for a moment. He listened the crash and rumble of thunder above until his anxiety eased back, seeping away into the basement walls. Then he took another long breath, and released it. When he opened his eyes again, she was watching him, her face solemn. 

“Okay?”

He nodded, and she smiled.

“I’m not angry at you, Charon. I think they were toying with you, those men. We were less careful than we should have been, but we weren’t _that_ relaxed.”

“One of them said you had a strong stomach.”

Her laugh caught him off-guard. 

“Jesus. Those fucking assholes.” She shook her head. “Okay. You’re right. We won’t be that careless again. You want to find a cave or a bunker or an old barn, block all the doors and hope there’s not a feral hiding somewhere, then I’m game. But if you tell me it’s not safe, then I believe you. And in settlements, you’re right to be cautious. I trust the people enough to camp by their fires but I really don’t know what most of them would do if you turned up there by yourself. I’m not stupid. I see the way they look at you. ”

He snorted. “Hancock probably fucks you on their porch and charges admission.”

She stared at him. “Wow. Okay.”

“…I didn’t mean that.”

“You really are in a bad mood today, aren’t you?”

He sighed. “I am frustrated with myself. It is not your fault. Or Hancock’s.”

“Or yours.”

His lip curled in a silent snarl.

“Stop saying that. All of this is my fucking fault. Snapping at you is my fault.”

She was watching him, silent, her eyes unreadable. She waited for a moment, as if wanting to make sure he was done. Then she shrugged one shoulder. 

“I don’t accept the _all of it_ part. And I don’t think you do, either. The snapping part? Yeah, that’s your fault.”

He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, smoothskin. I don’t know why I said that.”

She nodded, and shrugged again.

“You’re angry. I get that. I was angry for a long time. I’m still angry. Every day there are more things to be angry about.”

“I don’t know why I’m angry. There is no reason to be. They are dead, we are alive. I am not angry at them, just… angry.”

“Yeah,” she said. She had lowered her eyes, a sad little smile on her face. 

He hesitated, and stepped towards her.

“Sloan?” 

She shook her head. “It’s nothing. I just… I feel like I’ve been letting you down.”

He stared at her, and after a moment he reached out, and she took his hand.  
  
“You…”  
  
A half-dozen variations of _you do not owe me anything_ flitted through his head, but she wouldn’t accept that, and he wasn’t sure he meant it. There _was_ something they owed one another. He just wasn’t sure what it was.  
  
“You have been a touchstone,” he said instead.

For a moment emotions warred on her face, her cheeks pink, something in her eyes that suggested she might cry. Then she swallowed, and nodded.

“That’s… I’m glad,” she said. “I just… I don’t know. I just felt like there’s… like something’s been missing. I could have been checking in more, or… I don’t know.” She squeezed his hand, and then stepped forward to slide her arms around his waist. “Are we okay?” she asked him, her voice muffled as she pressed her cheek against his armour. 

“Of course we’re okay, smoothskin.” He stroked his hand through her hair, his other arm wrapped around her shoulders. “None of this is your fault.”

“I haven’t checked in. I like to check in, sometimes, with my people. See how we’re doing, if everything’s okay between us. And I just realised… I haven’t checked in with you in a while. Not since we got back from the bunker.” She looked up at him. “It’s good, to stop and take stock now and then. Get a feel for where we are. You’ve been distant. That’s all.”

“I didn’t mean to be,” he grumbled. “I just… I do not want to get distracted. I was lost in a dream, before. I don’t want someone to catch us…”

“With our pants down?” She smiled at him.

“…Something like that,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I need to be aware. It is hard to be aware when all my senses are focused on you. I was watching you instead of the shadows, and we were tailed without my noticing. I won’t do that again.”

“I know. We’ll keep our eyes on the shadows. I just… don’t want us to lose sight of each other in the process. You know?” She held his eyes, her eyebrows pinched together. “We’re a team. You just… you can talk to me, if you need anything. You’re taking the lead here. What do you want?”

“I want — I want to not fucking feel like you’re going to disappear if I close my eyes.”

His breath caught in his throat, and he looked away, to the grey concrete of the basement wall. He hadn’t expected to say it, and it shook him. He didn’t want to examine that feeling. 

He felt Sloan’s arms tighten around him, and some of the tension in the air seemed to dissipate as she exhaled, and let him go.

“Okay,” she said. He looked back down at her to find her standing with her eyes unfocused, one hand resting on his armour. “So how do we do that? What do you need from me?” She looked up to meet his eyes. “You aren’t expected to deal with this shit alone. If you need something, you can say so. We can work this out together.”

He sighed, and shrugged a shoulder. “Time,” he said, and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Well… time we have.” She smiled. “Not like we have any work deadlines coming up.”

He sighed, and sank to the ground, his back against the concrete wall. All of it, the stress of the last few months, the anxiety, the constant need to be alert, the fucking cold and the radiation of the storm… down here, none of it mattered. There was nothing to do but wait out the storm. Barely a need to stand guard, with the radiation chasing all the humans into whatever lead-lined safety they could find. Even ghouls and mutants would shelter from the rain. The first time he was able to relax in weeks, and he was still waiting for an attack that wouldn’t come. 

He laughed, and raked both hands back through his patchy hair.

“Fuck, smoothskin.” He shook his head. “What am I doing?”

“Don’t ask me, killer. I don’t even know what I’m doing, most of the time.” She sat herself on the bottom stair, facing him with her hands on her knees. “Doesn’t matter how good you are at it, how many times life kicks you down, how much shit you’ve been through… I swear something else will come along and turn everything upside down.” She smiled. “I got through the war, I got through the Bar exam, I got through the world ending and my husband dying, and I still have a panic attack when a feral catches me unawares.”

“You are getting better at that. The ferals.”

She made a face. “That time in Nahant —”

“That time in Nahant they nearly fucking — I don’t want to talk about Nahant.” He took a deep breath, and huffed it out through the hole where his nose had been. “I will get over this,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “I have survived worse.”

“I know you will. You just don’t need to do it alone.”

“This is not something you can help me with, beauty.” He shook his head. “I am second-guessing myself. Questioning my judgement. I made a mistake and it cost us. I know that this will pass, but… it is stressful. I don’t know if I am making the right choices.” 

“Charon, If you’re worried you’re making the wrong call, you can run it past me. Assuming we’re not in the middle of a fight, I mean.” She leaned forward. “You don’t have to hide this kind of thing from me.”

He sighed. He hadn’t been trying to hide anything from her, but some things were too difficult to talk about. There was too much of his past that he would need to explain. The mistress, as he knew from experience, had imagination. She would spend too long afterwards unpicking a statement to find the moments, the fears, that lay lurking in the shadows of memory. 

But he owed her this. And if she knew, perhaps things would be easier.

“I have done this many times,” he said slowly. “Over and over again, for more than a hundred years. I know the patterns of it. Something bad happens, something worse than usual. But there is no time to do anything like… I don’t know. Process, heal. I lock it away and —” He broke off, grimacing as his thoughts overtook one another, tangling in his head. “No one else has cared what I _feel_ about anything. They give orders and I obey. There is no time to _heal_. I lock the thing away and I do what I am meant to do. I follow orders. I work. I let the contract and the employer guide me and I do not need to think about anything. I do not need to feel. There… there is a… stillness. If there is nothing else, there are orders. I understand orders.” He took deep breath, and looked up at her, meeting her eyes. “This is different. I do not know the patterns of this kind of survival. Now I _need_ to feel, because —” He almost choked on it, something between laughter and despair. He gestured toward her. “I can’t _not_ feel around you. And you give too few orders. I need to think, to make decisions, or this doesn’t work. It did not matter before if I failed and some cunt master died. It matters if _you_ die. Do you understand?”

She was watching him with a kind of thoughtful melancholy, her head tilted just a little to one side.

“I understand,” she said slowly, as if sketching out the idea in her head as she spoke. “You can’t retreat to old coping mechanisms because of… the way in which we operate together. And the new coping mechanisms aren’t familiar enough yet, or they’re just not functioning the way you want them to. It’s difficult to do what you need to do, and the consequences for fucking it up are too high.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” She chewed on her bottom lip, her gaze drifting over the wall. “Should we have stayed in Goodneighbor? You wouldn’t need to worry about protecting me so much there.”

“No. This was good. Moving, fighting… I feel myself again.” She seemed unconvinced, and he leant forward, towards her. “I am not complaining, mistress. I am explaining.”

She was silent for a moment, nodding, as she turned this over in her head. Looking for alternatives. For solutions.

“Maybe a shorter excursion next time?” she suggested. “Just around Boston, or — or I could give more orders, if that would help.”  
  
He huffed a laugh, and shook his head.  
  
“No. I like this, being out here, with you. Just…” He hesitated, aware of the foolishness of asking for something that she had always given without question. “Just patience. Be patient with me.”

Her face relaxed into a smile.

“That I can do.”


End file.
